Comrades! The subject I must speak about today is the greatest crisis that has crashed down upon all contemporary countries, which at the present moment perhaps bears down most heavily on Russia and, in any case, is felt immeasurably more acutely there than in other countries. And about this crisis, about the hunger that has descended upon us, I must speak in accordance with the task set before us in connection with the general situation. And when we speak of the general situation, we cannot, of course, limit ourselves to Russia alone, especially since at the present time all countries of contemporary capitalist civilization are bound together more tightly and more painfully than before.

Everywhere, in both warring and neutral countries, war—the imperialist war of two groups of gigantic predators—has brought with it the complete exhaustion of productive forces. Ruin and impoverishment have reached such a point that in the most advanced, civilized and cultured countries, which for not only decades but centuries have not known what hunger is, war has brought about hunger in the most genuine, most literal sense of the word. True, in the advanced countries, especially those in which large-scale capitalism has long accustomed the population to the maximum possible level of economic organization under this system, in such advanced countries hunger has been managed to be properly distributed, prolonged, made less acute, but from hunger, from genuine hunger, countries like Germany and Austria have suffered for a long time, not to mention the defeated and enslaved countries. Now we can scarcely open a single newspaper without encountering a whole series of reports from a whole series of advanced, cultured countries, not only belligerent but also neutral ones, like Switzerland, like some Scandinavian countries, without meeting with news of hunger, of terrible calamities that have befallen mankind in connection with the war.

Comrades, for those who have observed the development of European society, it has long been beyond doubt that capitalism could not overcome itself peacefully, that it leads either directly to rebellion against the yoke of capital among the broad masses, or it leads to the same result through a far more severe, agonizing and bloody path of war.

Already many years before the war socialists of all countries pointed out and solemnly declared at their congresses that a war between the advanced countries would be not only the greatest crime, that this war over the division of colonies, over the division of capitalist plunder would be not only a complete break with the achievements of the newest civilization and culture, that it could lead—and that it would inevitably lead—to the undermining of the very conditions for the existence of human society. For the first time in history the most mighty conquests of technology are being applied on such a scale, so destructively and with such energy to the mass slaughter of millions of human lives. With such application of all productive means to the service of war we see that the bitterest prediction is being fulfilled and that barbarization, hunger and the complete decline of all productive forces are engulfing an ever-greater number of countries.

I therefore recall how right one of the great founders of scientific socialism, Engels, was when in 1887, thirty years before the Russian revolution, he wrote that a European war would lead not only to crowns, as he expressed it, flying by the dozens from the heads of crowned persons and there being no one to pick up these crowns, but that this war would bring in its wake unprecedented barbarization, brutalization and backwardness of all of Europe, and along with it war would entail either the domination of the working class or the creation of conditions making this domination necessary{147}. The founder of Marxism expressed himself on this occasion with redoubled caution, for he clearly saw that if history were to proceed in such a manner, it would lead to the collapse of capitalism, to the expansion of socialism, then a more agonizing, more difficult transition, a more acute need and a more severe crisis, which would undermine all productive forces, could not even be imagined.

And so we see now plainly what the consequences of the imperialist slaughter of peoples, which has dragged on into the fourth year, mean, when it is felt in all, even the advanced countries, that the war has reached an impasse, that there is no way out of it on the basis of capitalism, that it will lead to agonizing ruin. And if we, comrades, if the Russian revolution—which was not brought about by any special merit of the Russian proletariat but by the course of the general unfolding of historical events through which this proletariat has been placed by the will of history temporarily in the forefront and has become for a time the vanguard of world revolution—if we must experience especially severely, especially acutely for us the agonies of hunger that is crashing down upon us ever more heavily, then we must firmly assimilate that these calamities are first and foremost the legacy of this accursed imperialist slaughter, which in all countries has led to unprecedented calamities, and where these calamities are only temporarily still concealed from the masses and from the knowledge of the vast majority of the peoples.

As long as military oppression continues, as long as war still persists, as long as it is still connected, on the one hand, with hopes for victory and the possibility of emerging from this crisis through the victory of one of the imperialist groups, and on the other hand, is determined by the fury of military censorship and the intoxication of the entire people by military fervor, only this conceals from the mass population of most countries the abyss into which they are falling, the abyss into which they have already halfway fallen. And we now must feel this especially acutely because nowhere, as in Russia, is there such a glaring contradiction between the immensity of the tasks set for itself by the risen proletariat, which understood that one cannot defeat wars, world war of the most mighty imperialist giants of the entire world, cannot defeat it without an equally mighty, equally world-embracing proletarian revolution.

And when circumstances forced us to occupy one of the outstanding places in this revolution and for a long time, at least from October 1917, to remain a detached detachment that circumstances do not allow to come to the aid of other detachments of international socialism with sufficient speed—we now must experience a position that is ten times more difficult. When we did all that was within the power of the directly rising proletariat and the poorest peasantry supporting it to overthrow our main enemy, in order to stand guard over the socialist revolution, we see at the same time how at every step the oppression of the imperialist predator states surrounding Russia and the legacy of war bear down upon us ever more heavily. The full consequences of war have not yet manifested themselves. Before us now, in the summer of 1918, perhaps one of the most difficult, most severe and most critical transitions of our revolution, the most difficult transition not only from an international point of view, where we are inevitably condemned to a policy of retreats while our true and only ally, the international proletariat, is only preparing for uprising, only coming to a head, but is not yet able to emerge openly and in its entirety, although all events in Western Europe, all the fierce malice of the latest battles on the Western Front, the entire crisis intensifying within the warring countries show that the uprising of European workers is not far off, that however it may be delayed, it will come inevitably.

It is precisely in such a position that we must experience the greatest difficulties within the country, as a result of which what provokes most anxiety is a series of waverings—the agonizing food crisis, the most agonizing hunger that has descended upon us, which presents us with a task requiring the maximum exertion of forces, the greatest organization, and which at the same time does not allow us to proceed toward the solution of this task in old ways. We will proceed toward the solution of this task with the class with which we fought against imperialist war, with the class with which we overthrew both the imperialist monarchy and the imperialist bourgeois Russian republic, with the class that must forge its own weapon, develop its own forces, create its own organization in the course of growing difficulties, growing tasks and the scope of revolution.

Before us now stands the most elementary task of all human society—to overcome hunger, to reduce, at least immediately the direct agonizing hunger that has seized both capitals and dozens of districts in agricultural Russia. And we must solve this task in the conditions of civil war, the fiercest, desperate resistance of exploiters of all ranks, all varieties, all colors and orientations. Undoubtedly, in such a situation those elements of political parties that cannot break with the old and believe in the new find themselves in a position of war, used for one purpose: for the purpose of restoring the exploiters.

To this question, to this connection of hunger with the struggle against exploiters and against the rising counter-revolution, we are invited by any news from any corner of Russia. Before us lies the task—the necessity to overcome hunger or, at least, to reduce its severity until the new harvest, to defend the bread monopoly, to defend the right of the Soviet state, to defend the right of the proletarian state. All surplus grain we must collect and ensure that all reserves are transported to the places where they are needed and properly distributed. This is the fundamental task—the preservation of human society (and at the same time incredible labor), which is solved in only one way: by general, intensified increase in labor.

In those countries where this task is solved through war, it is solved through military slavery, through the introduction of military slavery for workers and peasants, solved through the provision of new, intensified advantages for exploiters. You will not find, for example, in Germany, where there is such social oppression, where every attempt to protest against the war is suppressed—where there still remains some sense of reality and a feeling of socialist enmity toward war—you will not find there any method of maintaining the situation more ordinary than the rapid emergence of new millionaires who have enriched themselves on the war. These new millionaires have enriched themselves desperately and fiercely.

The hunger of the masses now serves in all imperialist countries as the best field for the development of the most fierce speculation, for the acquisition of unprecedented wealth through need and hunger.

The imperialist countries encourage this, as, for example, in Germany, where hunger is best organized. And it is not without reason that they say that there—in the center of organized hunger, where bread rations and crusts are best distributed among the population. We see there new elements of millionaires becoming an everyday phenomenon of the imperialist state; otherwise they cannot fight hunger. They give double, triple, quadruple profit to those who have much grain and who know how to speculate and transform organization, rationing, regulation, distribution into speculation. We do not wish to follow this path, no matter who pushes us onto it consciously or unconsciously. We say: we have stood and will continue to stand side by side with that class with which we fought against war, together with which we overthrew the bourgeoisie and together with it we are experiencing all the hardships of the present crisis. We must stand firmly for the bread monopoly, but not in such a way as to legalize capitalist speculation on a large or small scale, but in order to fight conscious plundering.

And here we see great difficulties, heavier dangers of struggle than when we faced tsarism armed to the teeth against the people or an armed-to-the-teeth Russian bourgeoisie, which did not consider it a crime to shed the blood of thousands and hundreds of thousands of Russian workers and peasants in the June offensive of last year, with secret treaties in their pockets, with participation in the division of plunder, and which considers it a crime the war of toilers against oppressors, the only just, sacred war of which we spoke at the very beginning of the imperialist slaughter and which now inevitably all events at every step connect with hunger.

We know how at the very beginning tsarist autocracy established firm prices and raised these bread prices. Of course! It remained faithful to its allies—grain merchants, speculators, banking magnates, who were making millions from this.

We know how the compromisers from the Cadet party, together with the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, and Kerensky introduced the bread monopoly, since all of Europe was saying that without monopolization it was impossible to hold out any longer, and how that same Kerensky in August 1917 circumvented the then-current democratic law. That is precisely what democratic laws and cleverly interpreted regimes exist for—to circumvent them. And we know how that same Kerensky in August doubled these prices, and then socialists of all varieties protested against this measure and were indignant at this fact. Then there was not a single organ of the press that was not indignant at Kerensky's conduct and that did not expose the fact that behind these minister-republicans, behind the cabinet of Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, there were the machinations of speculators, that they gave in to them, doubling bread prices, that there was nothing but concessions to speculators. We know this history.

We now compare how things proceeded with the bread monopoly and the struggle against hunger in the capitalist countries of Europe, how they proceeded with us. We see how counter-revolutionaries now use this. We must draw firm and unshakable conclusions from this lesson. Yes, the course of events led to the fact that the crisis, reaching agonizing hunger, led only to further intensification of civil war, led only to the exposing of such parties as the Right Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, distinguished from the openly capitalist Cadet party only in that the Cadet party is the party of outright reactionaries. The Cadets have nothing to say and do not need to appeal to the people; they do not need to disguise their goals, but these parties, which compromised with Kerensky and shared power and secret treaties, they need to appeal to the people. (Applause.) And as a result they are forced from time to time, against their will and their plan, to expose themselves.

When we see how on the ground of hunger, on the one hand, uprisings and rebellions of people tortured by hunger break out, and on the other—a streak of counter-revolutionary uprisings runs like a thin line from one end of Russia to the other, clearly fed and financed by Anglo-French imperialists and the efforts of Right Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks (applause), then we say to ourselves: the picture is clear; let whoever wishes continue to dream of some kind of united fronts.

We now see especially clearly that even after the defeat of Russian capitalism in open military conflict, after from October 1917 through February and March 1918 all open clashes of revolutionary and counter-revolutionary forces showed the counter-revolutionaries, even the leaders of the Don Cossacks, on whom they counted most, that their cause is lost, because the majority of the people everywhere are against them. And every new attempt, even in the most patriarchal localities, with a layer of the wealthiest farmers, the most estate-bound, like the Cossacks—everywhere, without exception, every attempt at counter-revolution led only to the fact that new layers of the oppressed working masses stood against them not in words but in deed.

The lessons of civil war from October through March proved that the toiling masses of the Russian working class and those who live by labor, the peasants not exploiting labor, that they are almost universally in all corners of Russia in gigantic majority stand for Soviet power. But whoever thought we had stepped onto the road of more organic development must have been convinced of his error.

The bourgeoisie saw itself defeated…{47} And here begins the split in Russian petty bourgeoisie: some are drawn toward the Germans, others toward Anglo-French orientation, and both directions converge in the fact that hunger orientation unites them.

To show you, comrades, clearly how not our party but its enemies and the enemies of Soviet power unite the dispute between German orientation and Anglo-French orientation on a single platform: overthrow Soviet power because of hunger—to show you how this occurs, I allow myself to briefly cite a report of the last Menshevik conference{148}. This report was published in the newspaper "Life"{149}. (Noise, applause.)

From this report, published in the newspaper "Life" in issue 26, we learn how the rapporteur on the question of economic policy, Cherevanin, criticizing the policy of Soviet power, proposed a compromise solution to the question, namely the attraction of representatives of merchant capital as practical workers on especially advantageous commission terms for them. We learn from this same report how the chairman of the Northern Food Administration present at the meeting, Groman, making use of, as is stated there, an enormous stock of personal observations and experience of every sort of observations—I add from myself, only in bourgeois circles—drew such conclusions: "it is necessary," he said, "to apply two measures: first, the present prices must be raised; second, a special premium must be appointed for timely delivery of grain" and so forth. (Voice: "Why is this bad?") Yes, you will have to hear how this is bad, although the speaker, not having received the floor, but using it from this corner (applause), thinks to convince you that there is nothing bad about it; but he must have forgotten the course of the Menshevik conference. In this same newspaper "Life" it is stated that after Groman spoke a delegate Kolokol'nikov with such a point of view: "We are offered to take part in Bolshevik food organizations." Is it not so, how bad this is—that is what one must say, remembering the intervention of the previous speaker. And if that same speaker, not wishing to calm down and not having the floor but using it, cries out that this is a lie, for Kolokol'nikov never said this, then I, taking note of this, propose to you to repeat this refutation clearly and audibly. Allow me to remind you of that resolution of the conference that was proposed there by the not-unknown Martov and which on the question of Soviet power in other words and other turns says literally the same thing. (Noise, cries.) Yes, no matter how much you may laugh at this, it remains a fact—representatives of the Mensheviks, in connection with a food report, call Soviet power not a proletarian but a worthless organization.

At such a moment, when counter-revolutionary uprising in connection with hunger and using hunger has become the order of the day, no refutations and no cunning stratagems will help, and the fact remains. Before us is a policy on the indicated question, splendidly developed by both Cherevanin and Groman and Kolokol'nikov. Before us is the revival of civil war, before us counter-revolution raising its head, and I am convinced that ninety-nine hundredths of Russian workers and peasants have drawn their conclusion from these events—not everyone yet knows of this—are drawing and will draw, and that this conclusion will be precisely such: that only by smashing counter-revolution utterly, that only by continuing a socialist policy on the question of hunger, in the struggle against hunger will we defeat both hunger and the counter-revolutionaries using this hunger.

Comrades, we are now arriving at the time when Soviet power, after a long and difficult struggle against severe and major counter-revolutionary enemies, has defeated them in the course of open clashes and, having defeated both the military resistance of exploiters and the sabotage resistance of all—has taken up organizational work in earnest. And the entire difficulty of the struggle against hunger, the entire gigantic severity of this task is explained by the fact that we have here directly approached the task of organization.

Victory in uprising is immeasurably easier. Victory over resisting counter-revolution is a million times easier than victory over the organizational task, especially there where we solved the task in which the risen proletariat and the small proprietor, broad layers of the petty bourgeoisie could proceed together to a significant degree, in which there were still many elements of general-democratic, general-labor character. We have now moved from this task to another. Agonizing hunger has forced us by force to the task that is purely communist. Here we have collided face to face with the implementation of the revolutionary-socialist task, here before us stand extraordinary difficulties.

We do not fear these difficulties, we knew of them, we have never said that it would be easy to transition from capitalism to socialism. This is an entire epoch of the fiercest civil war, agonizing steps, when to one detachment of the risen proletariat of one country will come the proletariat of another country to correct jointly their errors. Here before us stand organizational tasks that encompass products of universal consumption, that encompass the deepest roots of speculation, that encompass the very top of the bourgeois world and the summits of capitalist exploitation, which are not easy to remove by a single massive assault. Here before us stand the small and deeply scattered throughout all countries roots and rootlets of this bourgeois exploitation in the form of small proprietors, in the form of all this way of life, habits and moods of small-proprietary and small-farm petty-bourgeois character, when before us stands the small speculator, the unaccustomedness to the new way of life, disbelief in it, despair.

For it is a fact that very many representatives of the toiling masses have succumbed to despair when sensing the extraordinary difficulties placed before us by the revolution. We do not fear this. There has never been a single revolution anywhere in which certain layers were not overcome by despair.

If the mass produces a known vanguard of discipline, if the vanguard knows that this dictatorship, that this firm power will help attract all the poor—this is a long process, a difficult struggle—this is the beginning of the socialist revolution in its full sense. When we see that united workers, the mass of the poor, organized as they were against the wealthy, speculators, against the mass of people to whom the unconscious or conscious mass of intellectuals repeats speculator slogans, like these Cherevannins and Gromans, when these workers, confused, speak of free sale of grain, of the import of freight transport—we answer that this means going to the aid of kulaks. We will not take this path. We say: we will rely on the labor element with which we achieved October victory, and only with our own class, only through the introduction of proletarian discipline among all layers of the toiling people—we will solve the historical task standing before us.

We must experience gigantic difficulties, collect all surpluses and reserves, distribute correctly and organize transport properly to tens of millions of people, establish absolutely regular work so that it proceeds like clockwork, overcome ruin supported by speculators and those lacking confidence, sowing panic. This task of organization can only be carried out by conscious workers standing face to face with practical difficulties. For this task it is worth devoting all forces and accepting decisive and final battle. And in this battle we will be victorious. (Applause.)

Comrades, the latest decrees on the measures of Soviet power{150} show us that the path of proletarian dictatorship—for every socialist not mockingly calling himself a socialist—is clearly and unquestionably a path of severe trials.

The most fundamental question of life, about grain, the latest decrees have posed. They all have three guiding ideas: the first—the idea of centralization, or the unification of everyone together into one common work under the direction of the center; to show ourselves serious and overcome all despondency, to cast aside individual services of every sort of bagmen, to merge all proletarian forces, for in the question of struggle against hunger we rely on the same oppressed classes and see a way out only in their energetic struggle against exploiters, in the unification of all their activity.

Yes, we are pointed out to how at every step the bread monopoly is being destroyed through bagging and speculation. It is heard more and more often from intellectuals: but after all, these bagmen are rendering them a service, and they all feed themselves from them. Yes, but these bagmen feed in a kulak fashion, they act precisely in the way they must act in order to strengthen, establish and perpetuate the power of the kulak, so that he who has power spreads it to those around him through individual persons by his profit. But we assert that if the forces of those persons who at present are guilty mainly only of disbelief were united, the struggle would be considerably easier. If there ever existed such a revolutionary who hoped to pass without difficulty into a socialist system, we could say that such a revolutionary, such a socialist is not worth a broken kopeck.

But we know that the transition from capitalism to socialism is an extremely difficult struggle. Yet we are ready to endure thousands of difficulties and make thousands of attempts, and after a thousand attempts we will proceed to the thousand and first. We are now attracting all Soviet organizations to new creative life, to the rise of new forces. We count on overcoming new difficulties by attracting new layers, by organizing the rural poor, and here I approach the second fundamental task.

I said that our first idea is the idea of centralization carried through in all decrees. Only by collecting all grain into common sacks can we overcome hunger, and still there will only be just enough grain. The former surplus that Russia had no longer exists, and it is necessary that communism penetrate deeply into the consciousness of each one, that all relate to grain surplus as to the property of the people, be imbued with the consciousness of the interests of toilers. And in order for this to be achieved, only that method is necessary which is proposed by Soviet power.

When other methods are proposed to us, we answer as we did in a session of the VTsIK{48}—when other paths were spoken of to us, we answered: go to Skoropadsky, to the bourgeoisie. Teach them such methods as raising bread prices, as a bloc with kulaks—there you will find ears willing to listen to you. But Soviet power will say one thing: difficulties are immeasurable; to each difficulty respond with new and newer efforts of organization and discipline. Such difficulties are not overcome in a month. In the history of peoples there have been decades devoted to overcoming lesser difficulties, and these decades have entered history as the greatest and most fruitful decades. Never will you sow despondency in us with the failures of the first half-year and the first year of the greatest revolution. We will continue our old slogan of centralization, unification, proletarian discipline on an all-Russian scale.

When we are pointed out to, as Groman points out in his report: "your detachments, which go to collect grain, they get drunk and themselves transform into illicit distillers, into robbers"—we will say: we know perfectly well how often this happens; in such cases we do not conceal it, do not paint over it, do not wave it away with supposedly left phrases and intentions. Yes, the working class is not separated from old bourgeois society by a Chinese wall. And when revolution comes about, things do not proceed as with the death of an individual, when the deceased is carried out. When old society perishes, its corpse cannot be nailed into a coffin and placed in a grave. It decomposes in our midst, this corpse rots and infects us ourselves.

Otherwise no great revolution has ever occurred in the world and cannot occur. It is precisely this with which we must struggle in order to preserve and develop the sprouts of the new in an atmosphere saturated with the miasmas of the decomposing corpse, that literary and political atmosphere, that play of political parties which, from the Cadets to the Mensheviks, are saturated with these miasmas of the decomposing corpse—all this they are preparing to throw at us as sticks under our wheels. Otherwise a socialist revolution can never be born, and otherwise than in the atmosphere of decaying capitalism and painful struggle with it can no country transition from capitalism to socialism. And therefore we say: our first slogan—centralization; our second slogan—unification of workers. Workers, unite and unite again! This is old, it does not seem striking, new, it does not promise those charlatan successes with which people like Kerensky entice you, who doubled prices in August 1917, as German bourgeois doubled and increased them tenfold, people who promise you immediate and direct successes, just only grant new and newer concessions to kulaks. Of course, we will not take this path, but we say: our second means, it is old, but at the same time an eternal means: unite! (Applause.)

We are in a difficult position: the Soviet republic is experiencing perhaps one of its severe transitions. New layers of workers will come to our aid. We have no police, we will not have a special military caste, we have no other apparatus except the conscious unification of workers. They will lead Russia out of the desperate and gigantically difficult position. (Applause.) Unification of workers, organization of worker detachments, organization of the hungry from the non-agricultural hungry districts—we are calling them to our aid, our Food Commissariat is appealing to them, we are telling them: a crusade for grain, a crusade against speculators, against kulaks, for the restoration of order.

A crusade—this was such an expedition when to physical force was added faith in what centuries ago people were forced by torture to consider sacred. But we want and think, and we are convinced, and we know that the October Revolution did it so that advanced workers and advanced peasants from the poorest peasantry now consider sacred the preservation of their power over landowners and capitalists. (Applause.) They know that physical force alone is not sufficient to affect the masses of the population. We need physical force, for we are building a dictatorship, we are building violence toward exploiters, and anyone who does not understand this we scornfully cast aside from us so as not to waste words in discussing the form of socialism. (Applause.)

But we say: before us stands a new historical task. We must make this new historical class understand that we need detachments of agitators from among workers. We need workers from various districts of non-producing provinces. We need them to go there as conscious preachers of Soviet power, and so that our food war, our war with kulaks, our war with disorder they sanctify, they legalize and make possible the carrying out of socialist propaganda, so that they bring to the village that distinction between the poor and the wealthy which is understandable to every peasant and which constitutes the deepest source of our strength, a source which it is difficult to raise and make beat in full stream, because we have numerous exploiters, we have the subjection by these exploiters of the masses by the most diverse methods, beginning with the bribery of the poor so that they, representatives of the poor, enrich themselves on illicit distilling or sell through speculation, enriching themselves by several rubles on every ruble. This is how kulaks and bourgeoisie act on the masses in the village!

We cannot blame the poor for this, because we know that for decades, for thousands of years they were in slavery, that they experienced serfdom and were under those orders that Russia left after serfdom. We must go to them not only with weapons directed against kulaks but also with the preaching of conscious workers who would bring their force of organization there. Unite, representatives of the poor—that is our third slogan. This is not flattery of kulaks and not an absurd measure of raising prices. If we double prices, they will say: they are raising prices for us, we have gone hungry, let us wait, they will raise them again. (Applause.)

This is a well-worn path, a path of pandering to kulaks and speculators, it is easy to take and paint an enticing picture. Intellectuals, calling themselves socialists, are ready to paint us such pictures, and there are plenty of such intellectuals. But we tell you: whoever wishes to follow Soviet power, whoever values it and considers it the power of toilers, the power of the exploited class, him we call onto another path. This new historical task—is a difficult thing. To solve it—means to raise a new layer, to give a new form of organization to those representatives of toilers and the exploited who in the majority are beaten down, ignorant and who are least of all united and who still have to unite.

Throughout the world the advanced detachments of urban workers, industrial workers have united, united almost universally. But almost nowhere in the world have there yet been systematic, wholehearted and self-sacrificing attempts to unite those who in villages, in small-scale agricultural production, in backwardness and darkness are stupefied by all the conditions of life. Here stands before us a task that unites into a single goal not only the struggle against hunger but struggle also for the entire deep and important structure of socialism. Here before us is such a fight for socialism for which it is worth devoting all forces and staking all, because it is a fight for socialism (applause), because it is a fight for the system of toilers and the exploited.

Let us look upon toiling peasants as our supporters on this path. On it we are awaited by firm conquests, and not only firm but inalienable ones. That is our third significant slogan!

These are the three fundamental slogans: centralization of food matters, unification of the proletariat, organization of the rural poor. And our appeal, the appeal of our Food Commissariat to each trade union, to each factory committee says: you are in a difficult situation, comrades, so help us, unite your efforts with ours, pursue every violation of order, every departure from the bread monopoly. This is a difficult task; but at the same time again and again, for the hundredth and thousandth time, act against bagging, speculation and kulakdom, and we will be victorious, because the majority of workers are led to this path by the entire course of their life and all the painful lessons of our food failures and food trials. They know that if at a time when Russia did not yet have an absolute dearth of grain—if then the shortcomings of food organizations were offset through isolated individual actions, then this will not happen further. Only general efforts, only the unification of all who suffer most in the hungry cities and provinces will help us, and this is the path onto which Soviet power calls you: unification of workers, their advanced detachments for agitation on the spot, for war for grain against kulaks.

Not far from Moscow, in the provinces lying nearby: in Kursk, Oryol, Tambov, we have, by the calculation of cautious specialists, still now up to 10 million puds of grain surplus. We are far from able to collect these surpluses into state reserves and unite them.

Let us set about this work with greater efforts. Let at each factory, where temporarily despair gains the upper hand, where people are ready from the torments of hunger to thrash about and rush toward the charlatan slogans of people who are turning back to Kerensky's methods, to raising firm prices, let there go a conscious worker and say: we see people who have despaired of Soviet power—come into our detachment of militant agitators, do not be troubled by so many examples when these detachments have broken up and gotten drunk. Each such example we will use to prove not that the working class is not good, but that the working class has not yet freed itself from the defects of the old robber society and will not free itself all at once. Let us unite our efforts, create dozens of detachments, unite their actions and put an end to these defects. Comrades, allow me in conclusion to point out to you several telegrams that are received both by the Council of People's Commissars and especially by our Food Commissariat. (Reads telegrams.)

Comrades, in connection with the food crisis, in connection with the torment of hunger that grips all cities, we are observing, to speak in the words of a saying: "good fame lies, but bad fame runs." I wish to make public documents that have been received by organs and institutions of Soviet power after the publication of the decree of May 13 on food dictatorship, in which it is stated that we count on the same thing as before—only on the proletariat. The telegrams indicate that on the spot they have already embarked on that path of crusade against kulakdom, on the path of organizing the rural poor, to which we call. Proof of